Well, I’m calling it #CastleBoren. It fits the description. 3 stories with bedroom suite on the top floor. And with just the 2 of us, having 3 bedrooms is a lot of house.

Best part? 100 yards down from where we’ve been renting for 10 years.

It all happened so fast. We weren’t quite expecting to buy a house this year. At all. But as those who’ve read “The Alchemist” knows, when things are meant to happen, things will happen.

It started when I went home in March to say goodbye to my childhood home. I was just talking to my dad about what his plans are once his architecture council’s presidency comes to an end early next year.

“Well, now that I have the money, I can finally travel. Maybe I’ll come stay with you.”

“I know just the hotel to put you in and we do have a discount there because we don’t have room in our apartment.”

He thought about it for a second.

“How much do you need to down pay a house?”

“At the rate we could afford? Oh, I don’t know, I guess about ye much.”

“How much is ye in Baht?”

“Ye many.”

He thought about it for a second.

“I can do that.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah. I can do that. Do you want to take a check with you back to the States?”

I did not bring back the check but…hello, down payment!

And so we started to pay attention to listings around our neighborhood and the surrounding areas again for a 3-bedroom place. (Dad totally just earned his guest room!) We even went to talk with our credit union about a home loan process. But we weren’t too serious about it yet since we haven’t seen anything we liked.

In late April, the town home around the corner put up a sign and had an open house. This is the same layout of the one we had already looked at and fallen in love with many years ago when the price for ridiculous and we couldn’t afford it anyway. This time, the price was still a bit high for us. But we couldn’t get the place out of our heads now, so we contacted my real estate agent friend Kym to see what we could do.

Kym got us chatting with her loan broker Dan who gave us a number to work with. While the town home was almost out of range, we picked a few other places to go look at, but we didn’t like anything else.

We went back to look at the house in May. The day we went to walk through, the price dropped to just a little over our range.

“We can put it a lower bid and see what they’d say,” suggested Brandon.

Now it’s June, and I was going to Chicago for work for most of the week. My Scorpio’s possessiveness kicked in big time. I didn’t want to lose the place while we noodled about making the offer for a week! So, we made the offer. And we waited.

Then in July, our offer was accepted, and escrow process began.

The day after that, I received this image from my brother in Thailand.

Yep. The demolition process has began on my childhood home, starting with the backyard. You know, the lush green field that used to look like this?

Indeed, I’ve SERIOUS mixed emotions piling up on top of each other. A crazy onion of emotions.

By denying to deal with the sadness and anxiety from the loss of my childhood home, I focus on getting all the home purchasing things done and starting a whole new chapter of my life which comes with its own set of anxiety.

But I’ve gotten through it. I’ve gotten through June and July. And now we’ve arrived in August.

This is when things really get quite uncanny.

We received the key to our new home on August 12, Thailand’s Mother’s Day.

Now, my mom was a worrier. She worried because she cared so much about all of us. She particularly worried about me because I started a life half the world away with, to her, no support system. It didn’t help the matter that I was the first one married and the last one to still not own a house. She worried about that until she passed in 2007.

And her we are, nine years later, Mother’s Day is the day I own a home.

Considering how smooth and timely everything has been, I’m certain my mom had something to do with that. After all, me owning a home would have been the best Mother’s Day gift to her.

Besides, Castle Boren is kind of like my childhood home: 3 stories, hardwood floor in the living quarter, and all the stairs in the world.

Adding on to this, we’re scheduled to move the big pieces of furniture on August 21. That’s the Thailand’s date for the anniversary of my mom’s passing. (I received the news on August 20 in California. So I usually consider both days the anniversary date.) (By the way, go out and “Be Kind for Khun Noi” on August 20-21.)

Seriously. You can tell me whatever you want but my mom DEFINITELY has something to do with all of this.